I'm working for our business again today, so that makes the day an easier one.

We managed to pick up a booster seat for Little Man yesterday. It doesn't have a harness seatbelt, which isn't required for his age group anyway, but I liked the extra security it gave. However, I'm going to have to give it up sometime, or he'll still be in one when he's twenty! It's black and red and looks like a racing car seat, so he's happy.

Sarah - yeah, I should get Catching Fire too. I really enjoyed that one. Maybe I'll wait until it's on sale. With the carseats over here they usually go by shoulder height when sitting, so it's more difficult to measure. I don't think it's as tall as 4'8" though. If that's the case, I'm lucky I ever stopped requiring one, as I'm 4'11".

Today was kinda a screwed up day. Brothers took 4 hours to hang up a part of a ceiling in my older brother's room because of how my house was built. Tomorrow, some maintenance work will be done on the roof.

Tonight, I have Top Gear to watch, which is fortunate, because my brothers also want to move a cabinet into the kitchen, and they might do that later tonight. At least today was decently warm and tomorrow will be the same.

With any luck, tonight I'll watch another 12 Hours of Sebring video after Top Gear is over and I'll be in bed by 6:00 this morning--I've taken the night shift at home since we got back and I'll probably be doing that until I start working again.

Hi all. I am being lazy today. I really should take a bit of a nap because I have choir tonight.Last night we had parent teacher conferences. MM's teachers were really surprised by his low vocabulary score because it doesn't fit. So they agree that it's nothing to worry about. They also said that his reading and math scores are impressive because he scored the highest possible and they said those are HARD tests. So yay. Bug's teacher showed us her scores on a graph that shows where she is in relation to other students based on that test, which is a national test. the graph showed several lines that showed averages, below average, above average, etc and Bug's line is up above even the highest scorers. So she's going to be getting some extra work to ensure that she is challenged. She's excited about it, which is good. She has a tendency to expect too much of herself and then gets upset if she doesn't achieve as high as she expected, so I hope it doesn't backfire, but for now, she's ready for something more than what she's getting now.

Lynne, when you say booster seat, is that for in the car?

Sarah, ugh, that would drive me nuts. I think that happens a lot in families where more is expected of one kid than the other. I hope I never do that to my kids.People weren't pushing their OWN kids over...just some people would be trying to get to a specific item and didn't really pay attention to who they were trampling to get there. What I hated was seeing young children carrying big heavy bags for their parents...things they should not have been expected to carry.

I'm working for Rochelle today. She called me yesterday as she wanted to talk to me about whether or not I'd be happy to manage Book Whispers. Book Whispers is a division of her company that helps people who are trying to self-publish. It was difficult for Rochelle to do this as she doesn't agree with self-publishing, but she knew that she couldn't publish every book that comes her way. She doesn't have the money, so now we help other people do it themselves. Another reason she does it is that it's a good source of income to help Wombat keep going.

So I will need to learn a lot of new stuff, like how to create e-books and how to set up people as businesses on publishing sites, but it should mean that I'll be able to get more work from her, which could be handy.

Susan - I'm glad to hear Bug is doing so well. You must be pleased. Yes, the booster seat is for the car. It's in now and he's very happy with it.

Most of the roof got fixed ahead of the snowstorm and I did some grocery shopping today. Last time this month for me, though, since I'm out of my own money but I did get some sandwiches, cheese for my pizzas and some club soda to make my own diet pop stuff with water flavoring stuff.

I have the final part of the 2013 12 Hours of Sebring that I'd like to watch tonight before I head to bed. This will also mark the last night for a while that I'll be able to let the stove burn out overnight. Yep, in the next 36 or so hours, the temps will go from being above 60 to single digits, and then back up to almost 50 by Monday. But with this winter, nothing really surprises me too much.

I also have a couple of other things that I'd like to try and do before I call it a night, but nothing too major.

Hi everyone! I think I am coming down with something...or it could be allergies. I am so sneezy!! But it's been GORGEOUS weather the last few days so it might be just all the plants springing up outside.

Lynne, I think it's great that the company is keeping up with the current market, even though she doesn't really agree with self publishing. I think most authors agree that there are some huge issues with it, especially devaluing the work of "legitimately" published authors because the market gets flooded with substandard books. Is there a way to tell whether a book is self published or not? I recently read a book that a friend recommended to me because her friend was the author and she said it was great. I had no idea that it was a self published book and that it was erotica. Really not my kind of book and there were issues with the writing that wouldn't have happened if it were a published work because an editor would have mentioned them. But, as you say, it's a good way for companies to increase their revenue and it does provide a sort of niche for writers who are having a problem getting their work published because of the sheer volume publishers and agents are receiving and they can't publish everything, even if it's good. And so much is subjective, based on a particular agent or publisher's taste.Yes, I'm very proud of BOTH the kids for how hard they are working in school and that they value education. Bug is excited about the challenge, which makes me happy, but I do have some reservations about it. When I sat down with her to explain that she might get some harder work, I told her it was ok if she had problems with it, and that it's also always ok to ask the teacher for help if you don't understand something. She was worried she wouldn't know which teacher to ask because they have a student teacher or a teacher's aide on Tuesdays. So we told her she can ask either teacher for help. So she went to the aide yesterday to warn her that she might ask for help sometimes...which tells me she's a bit apprehensive about it. She's looking forward to it, but she's also intimidated and wants to make sure she has everything planned out thoroughly in case she has problems. On the one hand, it's very sweet that she wants to do well, but on the other, I see it could become an anxiety problem with her.Ok, I figured it was for the car, but we always just called them "car seats" and a booster seat was for at a restaurant or movie theater to make you sit higher so kids could reach the table or see over the seat in front of them.

I worked for Rochelle yesterday. During the course of the morning she realised that we don't have time to do another edit on The Reign, so she said, "Spend the next week fixing it up, then we'll typeset it." So on Wednesday next week I'll be typesetting the final book in my trilogy!

She's also asking me about follow up work. She particularly wants a stand-alone fantasy book. I do have one I'm working on, but it's quite violent, and she was giving me funny looks when I was telling her about it!

Susan - When it comes to car seats, we call them car seats when they're for younger children, but for the older ones it's called a booster seat. The ones for younger kids usually come with a harness, whereas the boosters use a normal seat belt. Yes, self-publishing is a problem in the way it does lower the quality of books overall. Unfortunately, there are a number of small, traditional publishers out there too who don't have very good reputations when it comes to editing, so quality can be something that is difficult to find no matter where you look. It's very frustrating.

I only just got online about 10 minutes ago. My little brother was in the kitchen playing DayZ (some zombie apocalypse game) since about 10 this morning. At least that gave me the opportunity to check out my Playstation 2, which still works.

I'll try possibly tomorrow night or Saturday night or something like that to start writing fan fic again. The snow here wasn't as bad as the NWS said it was going to be. There seems to be only a few inches in my yard. And yet, it's going to be almost 0 tonight, get up to about 40 tomorrow, and it'll be almost 60 on Friday. At least spring is nearing now.

I also finished up my 12 Hours of Sebring videos last night, and I have this year's race coming up this weekend, though Fox Sports 1 will only have the first 3 hours on Saturday and a highlight thing on Sunday morning. But other than that, things are basically OK where I'm at.

I'm working for our business today, so I should get some time this afternoon to continue editing The Reign. It's going well, I think and I should have no problems having the final draft ready by next Wednesday.

It's a little sad that this journey is over for the moment. Now I've got to find an idea to continue with.

I haven't done too much so far today, but at least I fixed something. TV in the bedroom was acting up, so I played with some of the wires on the back of it (pulling them out and plugging them back in because the problem seemed to be a connection issue), and problem solved.

I probably won't do fan fic tonight or perhaps until Sunday depending on how things work out. I forgot this weekend is the start of the F1 season and NBCSN has both practices on tonight, qualifying tomorrow and the race Saturday night. Add to that the 12 Hours of Sebring (which Fox Sports 1 will only show the first 3 hours live, with a highlights special on Sunday), I've got a busy motorsport weekend.

But at least things are sort of back to normal. I wish it was warmer, but we can't control nature and things will hopefully be better sooner rather than later.